


i don't want our footsteps to be silent any more

by dickviolin



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, post-Wimbledon 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 05:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: the wimbledon final broke me, so i wrote this.find me ontumblrandtwitter





	i don't want our footsteps to be silent any more

On-court interviews after a final are always a blur, but Roger swears he jumped straight from sending the ball flying into the stratosphere to the rabbit warren of corridors in the clubhouse. No doubt Sue Barker asked him some questions. No doubt he answered them. No doubt he shook hands, posed for photos, looked magnanimous. No doubt he said something considered and polite to Novak.

But he can’t remember it. Time has leapt forward, and here he is.

He finds his way through on muscle memory alone. The place is deserted. All the ushers and stewards and various other members of staff have been shooed away. He can hear, for the first time since he arrived, the squeak of his shoes on the floor. The sound of his breath. His kit bag weighs about three times as much as it did when he brought it onto the court. He’d handed the plate over to some chappy in a blazer as soon as he was through the tunnel, so at least he doesn’t have that weighing him down. But his steps are like lead, and it feels like a herculean effort now. After all that. They should have just dug up centre court and buried him there. A blue plaque somewhere nearby: _here lies Roger Federer, who didn’t know when to quit_.

Another eternity passes in the blink of an eye. He arrives at the door of the locker room with, again, no memory of walking there. He pauses. He raises his hand to the polished wood. He hesitates. Rocks back on his heels. Rocks forward. Goes in.

“Roger.”

Rafa is propped up on a bench, against a locker. He is almost as sweaty as Roger- whenever he’d looked up at his box, Rafa was on his feet, screaming at the top of his voice and fist-pumping, alternately in ecstasy and anger. He puts his _all_ into tennis, Roger notes, not for the first time. Not just his own.

He is wearing a jumper, despite it being a burning hot summer day by British standards (_so _cold_, Rogi, always so cold in Britain_). His hair is a little (very) messy, and the laces on one of his trainers is undone. He is breathtaking. He is always, always breathtaking.

“You got here quick,” Roger says.

“Didn’t want you to get here alone.” A small smile. “Sit down.”

“I need to get a shower- my presser-”

“Shower can wait. Journalists can wait. Sit down.”

So Roger drops his bag and goes over and sits down. Rafa kisses him, light, gentle, a greeting.

“I lost,” Roger says at last, as if Rafa wasn’t watching the whole match. “I tried so hard. I tried my hardest. And I still lost.”

Rafa takes his hand- his right hand, blistered and bruised and sore. He kisses his knuckles. Rafa has his rituals. This is one the press don’t know about. One they’ll never know about. How neither of them will consider any of Roger’s matches over until Rafa has kissed the knuckles on Roger’s playing hand.

“_Mi rey_,” Roger says softly. Because now, _now_ it’s over.

“You,” Rafa says, with uncommon seriousness, “Are always a champion to me.”

And that does it. Without another word, Roger breaks down in tears. Ugly, loud, gasping sobs. He couldn’t control it even if he’d tried. Perhaps that was why he was so exhausted. He’d been wanting to cry since about the third set. And now he can. Now, he is safe. They are alone. They are together. He has Rafa by his side, and is therefore entirely invincible. Even at his weakest, even as he feels like he’s coming apart at the seams, Rafa is a bobbing lifebuoy. Now, Rafa pulls him in, tight and fierce. Like he’s scared Roger might run.

(Once upon a time, Roger would have run. Once upon a time, defeats like this would send Roger diving for cover. He would throw himself into the shower, get through his presser as quickly as humanly possible, then disappear into his hotel room. Rafa rewrote that rule. Rafa rewrote every rule.)

He smells like sweat and beer and grass, like his shampoo and his cologne, like his laundry powder and like that ineffable _Rafa_-ness that he has carried with him since Roger met him. He smells, in short, like home. Roger buries his nose into his chest and sobs, and sobs, and sobs. In turn, Rafa wraps one arm round him to rub his back in small circles. The other he brings up to stroke Roger’s hair. Roger probably smells revolting. Rafa doesn’t seem to mind. He never does.

“Shh,” he soothes as Roger continues to cry. “Is OK now. Is all done. Is OK.”

“I lost,” Roger gasps. “I- I couldn’t do it.”

“Is OK,” Rafa repeats. “I am proud of you.” And then quiet, smooth Catalan. Roger picks some of it out, but most of it washes over him like white noise.

“Always a champion to me,” Rafa says again. Roger thinks he should probably have stopped crying by now. He’s getting Rafa’s t-shirt all wet, and probably gross and snotty, too. But the tears keep coming. And it is with small, infinite wonder that he knows that Rafa will not let him go until every last tear has been wrung from his body. That Rafa will hold him for hours, that Rafa will let himself go stiff and numb from the awkward position, that Rafa will make himself late for important appointments and hold people up, all because Roger needs him.

Sometimes Roger wonders what he did to deserve this. He doesn’t believe in God, but maybe if he did, he would think Rafa was his guardian angel. As it is, he thanks pure, dumb luck that he can call Rafa his.

He slumps into the chair in the conference room. There’s a clock on the opposite wall, and he wonders just how quickly he can do this without seeming rude or unprofessional. Or whether he gives a shit about seeming rude or unprofessional.

Time goes weird again, sliding forward but dragging its heels at the same time. Minutes or more later, one of the BBC journalists raises his pen and has the mic handed to him.

“What goes into your mental recovery after a loss like this, especially going into the US Open in August?”

He sits back and huffs a breath out. He thinks about giving his usual pat answer.

“After a loss like this,” he says instead, “After any loss- I’ve learnt that I can’t deal with it alone. I used to think it was a sign of weakness, needing other people to help you cope with things like this. Now, I know different. So, you know, the key to getting over something like this lies with relying on my family.” He scratches his knee and hopes that in the slight pause someone will say something and they can move on, but they don’t. “My husband, especially.”

And maybe one day he’ll say something more. Maybe one day, he’ll explain just how Rafa puts him back together after he’s been broken apart. But he isn’t there yet; seeing the flurry of activity following the word ‘husband’ was enough to stop him from going on. It was a step in itself, mentioning Rafa even obliquely, but as the man he loves and the man he married takes his hand as they leave that evening- like it’s not even a question that needs to be asked, like Rafa’s hand was made for Roger’s- he thinks, perhaps, one day, he’ll be able to explain.


End file.
